Simone Ackuaku - Word of Mouth

How to make a modern statement?
Fashion or opinion, it is increasingly easy to cast your online pebble into the internet pond and watch the ripples radiate on search engines worldwide, but are there just too many voices with nothing to say or contribute out there. We need filters to protect our sanity, like a bad case of spacejunk our voices burn up on the atmospheric firewalls of the planets Twitter and Facebook.



Simone H Ackuaku - Its Statement

There are endless books, websites and experts who help you raise your profile at the temple of Google. A pressurised pecking order where not only must you be in Google's first page but in the top three names. Our lives will soon resemble a never ending season of football leagues, sections of our online lives being relegated and promoted, achievements judged on a Champion's League of online shouting. Let us not forget that the internet is like space, and the Alien tagline of  'In space no one can hear you scream' is very apt.

It would be easy to announce the demise of human contact and debate. I know this not true. I watch my daughter play in our street, endless conversations, discussions and debates about the same subjects that occupied my 8 year's old mind. Mostly about saving face after some humiliating sporting defeat in my case.

It is true though that we are bombarded with more and more information. Where is it all heading and will we reach a limit where our brains can't cope any more. What becomes a commodity is Silence, the ability to spend time with  a person or object in the physical world, the simple pleasure of seeing and experiencing a fleeting moment without having to capture it on a smartphone.

A smile. A statement.

Not the insipid words that escape from those spotless super white film-star gnashers though.
I would want to listen to the words that came from the picture (above), what would Simone H Ackuaku's mouth have to say.  If only the drawing could talk . Like all the students in the Future Bound book I'll have to find out when we launch on the 13th June 2013.

Choco Canal - Bad Teeth

It was the simplicity of Simone's image that made me smile this morning.

AL.

ps. The whole teeth idea reminded me very much of an unusual artist that I saw at Nottingham's Lightbite exhibition in 2011. Choco Canal.

Choco Canal - Claudia Winkleman

Alice Firman - Ammunition of Expression

 

Alice Firman's Future

With the most recent news from Boston today the future takes a seismic leap and we land flat on our faces once again. The yellow brick road ahead of us is full of cracks and the uneven surface looks daunting. We do not live in a Chocolate box world and it is refreshing that some fashion doesn't either.

I'm currently working on a book about the Future with students from University for the Creative Arts - Epsom. We've had 52 entries so far with such a broad range of styles and quality. They come from a wide spectrum of disciplines too. These are pre-degree minds, fresh and ripe with ideas about the future.

Over the next month I'll be writing about some of the pages that have caught my eye.
Alice Firman's entry certainly did! Who knows whether we will need gas masks and protective clothing to walk the streets safely but I see a future where we will be proud to display our personal slogans across our chests . The Protest in its purest form is fast becoming a laughing joke. Huge numbers of people rally against wars, cuts and most recently funerals but if you haven't got your hands on the wheel of the media band wagon then its a lost cause.

If the choice 'to buy or not to buy' is one of society's catalysts for change then Fashion must be at the tip of future revolutions. Here is an artform that has the ability to communicate ideas, bind communities together through identity and offers the ammunition of expression. Unlike the powerful online voices that unfortunately wither in the ether, the future of fashion gives us the chance to wear our hearts and ideologies on our sleeves.

Alice Firman displays a dark future ahead of us in her FutureBound page, but will she be a voice for change? At CollectConnect we will be keeping an eye on her when she takes the journey north to Scotland next year for her BA. Hopefully in 3 years time we'll see a new style of kilt invading our southern counties once again. One that reflects the true defiance and strength of the tartan clans rather than the limp variety we are served at weddings nowadays.

AL.